Step 10: Save Your Path

We have our path, we have our brush, and we've set our Foreground color to white. We're ready to create our first light streak! Switch over to Photoshop's Paths palette, which you'll find grouped in with the Layers and Channels palettes. You'll see your path listed, which is currently named "Work Path", along with a preview of the path on the left, similar to how layers are shown in the Layers palette with their name on the right and a preview area on the left. Whenever you create a new path, Photoshop automatically names it "Work Path", which means it's temporary. If you don't save the path before drawing a new one, the new path will replace the previous one and you'll have lost it. In many cases, this isn't a problem, but let's save our path just in case we want to go back to it later.

To save a path, all we need to do is rename it. Simply double-click on the name "Work Path" and Photoshop will pop up the Save Path dialog box, with the suggested name of "Path 1" already entered for you. Click OK to exit out of the dialog box and Photoshop will rename the path "Path 1". The path is now saved:

Step 11: Stroke The Path With The Brush

Let's create our first light streak. Click on the small, right-pointing arrow in the top right corner of the Paths palette, which brings up the Paths palette's fly-out menu, then select Stroke Path from the list of options:

This brings up the Stroke Path dialog box. We want to stroke the path with our brush, so make sure the Tool option is set to Brush. Then, to tell Photoshop to simulate pen pressure for us, click inside the checkbox to the left of the words Simulate Pressure:

Click OK to exit out of the dialog box and Photoshop will stroke the path with the brush, creating our first light streak. Notice how the brush stroke tapers off at both ends thanks to that "Simulate Pressure" option:

If you think your brush stroke is either too thick or too narrow, simply press Ctrl-Z (Win) / Command-Z (Mac) to undo the stroke, then make your brush larger or smaller by pressing either the left or right bracket keys on your keyboard. The left bracket key makes the brush smaller, and the right bracket key makes it larger. Try again once you've resized your brush.

We've added our first light streak, but it doesn't look much like a light streak at the moment. It looks like a fancy white brush stroke, which is exactly what it is. To make it look more like a light streak, we need to add some color and some glow effects, and for that, we'll use a couple of simple layer styles.

Step 12: Add An "Outer Glow" Layer Style

Switch back over to your Layers palette. You'll see your white brush stroke in the preview area of "Layer 1". Click on the Layer Styles icon at the bottom of the Layers palette and select Outer Glow from the list of layer styles that appears:

This brings up Photoshop's Layer Style dialog box set to the Outer Glow options in the middle column. Change the Blend Mode option at the top to Linear Light, which will give us a much more intense glow than what we'd normally get. Then choose a color for your glow by clicking on the small color swatch directly below the word "Noise". This will bring up Photoshop's Color Picker. You can either choose your color from the Color Picker, or if you prefer, you can sample a color directly from the image. To sample a color, simply move your mouse cursor over the image. You'll see your mouse icon turn into the Eyedropper icon. Move the eyedropper over the color you want to sample, then click to sample it. I'm going to sample a light area of the woman's skin to use as my outer glow color:

Once you've chosen your color, click OK to exit out of the Color Picker. Lastly, increase the Size of the outer glow to somewhere around 30 pixels. You may need to raise or lower that amount depending on the size and resolution of your image:

Don't exit out of the Layer Style dialog box just yet because we still have one more layer style to add. Here's how my light streak looks so far after adding my outer glow: